FALL 2002  VOLUME
7, NUMBER 2

By
Putting the Sciences Under One Roof,
MHC Is Making Multidisciplinary Education Tangible

BY
JANET TOBIN

For
the past one hundred years, boundaries between scientific disciplines
have been coming down. Discoveries, more and more, are being made
on the cusp of fields, as well as at their core. "It's a rare
chemist these days who is not aware of recent developments in
molecular biology; any physicist worth her salt knows about photosynthesis;
any good psychologist is interested in the chemical/biological
bases of behavior; and many mathematicians and computer scientists
are describing or modeling physical, chemical, and biological
phenomena," says Frank DeToma, Professor of Biological Sciences
on the Alumnae Foundation. Now some colleges and universities--Mount
Holyoke among them--are building "unified" science centers, physical
embodiments of multidisciplinary philosophy and practice.

JIM
GIPE

Kendade
Hall

Instead of isolating
departments in separate buildings, unified science centers provide
adjacent labs and offices and shared equipment for faculty with
overlapping research interests and common spaces for students
and faculty immersed in varied areas. Kendade Hall, the newly
constructed heart of the College's $34.5 million unified science
center, opened for business this fall.

Kendade is the first
phase of the College's science center to be completed. Its opening
comes as good news to Mount Holyoke students, of whom between
one-quarter and one-third major in science or mathematics, and
to faculty, who are now making use of Kendade's state-of-the-art
research and teaching labs and classrooms. Expected to be completed
by next fall, the center will bring together, within a complex
of buildings, the departments of astronomy, biological sciences,
chemistry, computer science, earth and environment, mathematics
and statistics, and physics, and the College's programs in biochemistry
and in neuroscience and behavior.

Integrated and
Innovative by Design
Mount Holyoke has been recognized as a leader in developing effective
interdisciplinary methods to teach science. In an extraordinary
show of support during 1999–2000, the National Science Foundation
(NSF) awarded the College five new Course Curriculum and Laboratory
Improvement Grants, three for curricular reform in physics, chemistry,
and earth and environment, and two for educational materials development.
The College was also recognized by the NSF in 1998 for its institution-wide
efforts at reforming introductory and core laboratories across
the sciences. The science center is the bricks-and-mortar manifestation
of the College's curricular approach. "The new center's design
was created to reinforce the unity of the sciences and to encourage
a physical and pedagogical union across scientific disciplines,"
says Charles Kirby, managing principal of Einhorn Yaffee Prescott
Architecture and Engineering, P.C. (EYP), the project's architects.
"The science faculty, students, and administration presented a
compelling vision of uniting disparate buildings and creating
a heart that would bring energy, vitality, and synergy to the
center." Kendade, notes Kirby, "will be on the 'tour' for any
college or university planning to build a science center."

A Commitment to
the Planet
Mount Holyoke is committed to preserving the Earth for future
scientists to explore, and every effort is being made to create
a science center that will have as little impact on the environment
as possible. Kendade was designed and built to meet Leadership
in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) criteria for a "green
building," as established by the United States Green Building
Council, an international organization that includes representation
from construction, environmental, architectural, financial, and
manufacturing firms. The group seeks to speed adoption of green
building practices, technologies, policies, and standards. Kirby,
whose firm has an emphasis in science and technology and sustainable
design and specializes in the design of environments for colleges
and universities, praised the College's commitment to environmentally
sound building design and construction, calling Mount Holyoke
"a leader in this area."

Off the Drawing
Board, onto the Quad
Over the summer, Kendade was transformed from a construction zone
to a completed facility. Before students arrived, finishing touches
were put on its five mediated classrooms, spaces that feature
state-of-the-art hardware and software. In these rooms, faculty
now control with a click of a button everything from room lights
to DVD players and data projector screens. Of special interest
to chemists is room 204, an octagonal-shaped mediated classroom
that, as of next fall, will feature ten Silicon Graphics computers
that run special molecular-visualization software. In August,
members of the physics
department became Kendade's first occupants. They now inhabit
a light-filled space featuring offices and a common room--complete
with a kitchen and views of the building's atrium. Genetics, molecular
biology, advanced physics, and optics labs were also completed
in August.

Getting Connected--at
Rapid Speed
Over the summer, Kendade was equipped with networking electronics
that provide access to Internet2, a high-speed research-focused
network. A $150,000 grant from the NSF funded the project. Begun
in 1996 as a means to enhance information sharing in the national
research community, Internet2 is a collaboration of research universities,
federal agencies, and communications companies. Because Internet2
has restricted access, it gives educational institutions uncongested
pipelines for academic material and opportunities to exploit high-performance
network capabilities. Internet2 is giving Professor of Physics
Howard Nicholson direct access to the software applications he
needs at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. It is enabling
Dean of Faculty Donal O'Shea, Elizabeth T. Kennan Professor of
Mathematics, to use live medical imaging with colleagues at Yale
University to test ideas about automating colon tumor detection.
It is helping Thomas Millette, associate professor of geography,
disseminate to colleagues at other institutions digital satellite
images for a study of the impact of sea-level rise caused by global
warming in the Plum Island sound salt marsh. It is expanding collaborations
by Associate Professor of Chemistry Sean Decatur with the University
of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, and Los Alamos National
Laboratory by allowing him to use real-time remote data collection
and analysis.

Kendade Makes
Its Debut
Students studying everything from electromagnetic theory to the
work of Henry James were among the first to attend classes in
Kendade. Those enrolled in Genetics and Molecular Biology, taught
by biological sciences faculty Jeffrey Knight and Craig Woodard,
were among the pioneers in its new labs. After finishing one of
her first experiments in a Kendade lab, Fayza Sohail '05 commented,
"The new building is so beautiful that it makes me want to come
to lab!" Kendade's spectacular four-story atrium, which has a
high-tech, futuristic feel, is already serving as a gathering
place for the College community. "I like the way Kendade blends
in with the old building on the outside," says Diana Rosenbaum
'05. "Then when you walk inside, it's just--wow!"

A Beautiful Day
in the Neighborhood:A Microcosm
of What Unification Is All About
Faculty who were displaced by construction have already seen the
benefits that proximity can bring. While Carr Laboratory, home
to the College's chemistry department, is being renovated, chemist
Decatur is biologist Woodard's new neighbor in Clapp Laboratory,
which houses the biological sciences department. Decatur specializes
in the study of how protein molecules fold--a biological process
that plays a crucial role in energy production, metabolism, and
the use of DNA information. His experiments, which apply physical
chemistry to the biology of the protein's folding process, transcend
the boundaries of biology, chemistry, and physics. Woodard studies
how steroid hormones control development in the common fruit fly,
a research area that focuses on biochemical processes that fuel
growth and development. Metabolism and the use of DNA are also
focal points of his work. The two scientists use the same techniques
to synthesize and purify the proteins they study, and both perform
spectroscopic measurements with the same equipment.

Says Woodard, "Although
I had certainly communicated with Sean before he began working
near me, I found that when he was close by, we had a level of
interaction that wasn't there when he was in another building.
We both realize more than ever before how much our research overlaps."
Decatur concurs, joking, "In the past, I rarely came out of my
lab in the basement except to teach. This summer, I actually talked
with Craig in the hallway and in the lab." When the renovated
Carr, part of the science center, is completed in January, Decatur
and Woodard will become permanent neighbors.

In the Zone
In fact, the top floor of Carr will become a "chemistry/molecular
biology zone," says Decatur, who is looking forward to sharing
space with "biologists who work at the molecular level and chemists
who work at the biological level." These include Amy Frary '90,
assistant professor of biological sciences, who looks at the genetic
control of quantitative trait variation in plants; Sarah Bacon
'87, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences,
who uses rats to study why mothers' immune systems do not reject
embryos; Lilian Hsu, Elizabeth Page Greenawalt Professor of Biochemistry,
who conducts research in transcription, the process by which the
information encoded in DNA is copied into RNA; and Wei Chen, Mary
E. Woolley Assistant Professor of Chemistry, who examines the
wetting behavior of solids by placing different liquids in contact
with them to control wettability by tailoring surface roughness
and chemical structures.

Melding
Kendade's success and experiences such as Decatur's and Woodard's
are early indicators that the College is benefiting from pursuing
a path of convergence. "Mathematics and the scientific disciplines
are melding into one broad, consistent, and mutually reinforcing
explanation of the universe and its local occupants," says DeToma,
director of the science center. "Our center is a metaphor for
these developments. It will encourage and facilitate cross-disciplinary
and multidisciplinary conversations between and among Mount Holyoke
scientists and their students."

The Science of
Raising $34.5 Million
Raising funds to create and improve College science facilities
is one of the goals of The Campaign for Mount Holyoke College,
a fundraising initiative publicly launched by the College in October
1998. The largest gift ever received by the College was made in
support of the science center. An anonymous alumna made a pledge
of $10 million, funding Kendade Hall. In addition, Marion Craig
Potter '49 pledged $5.5 million, also supporting the construction
of the science center and representing the second largest single
gift in the history of the College.

Eyeing
Kendade :
Incorporating Scientific Imagery

In the entry
portico, a spiral periodic table of the elements assembled
from inscribed, hexagonal granite blocks greets visitors.
In the balconies of the atrium, images of planets, nerve
cells, and a human female karyotype showing all forty-six
chromosomes unwind underfoot. And in the atrium's lobby,
the floor will bear the signature of the sun, a figure-eight
flourish to be traced over the course of a year by a shaft
of sunlight entering the building through a lens in its
south wall. In Kendade Hall, science refuses to be confined
to laboratories and classrooms, spilling out to infuse the
entire building with the energy and spirit of scientific
inquiry. These visual elements were among the many ideas
spawned when the College's science faculty put their creativity
to work thinking of ways to incorporate scientific imagery
into Kendade and to use the atrium itself as a vehicle for
teaching. "I feel it is important to have this imagery be
a part of the building," says Rachel Fink, associate professor
of biological sciences, who led efforts to generate ideas
among faculty members and worked with architects to incorporate
those concepts into Kendade. "What we see every day as scientists
is so visually stunning that I wanted to relay it."

While looking
at plans for Kendade, astronomy professor Tom Dennis noticed
that the atrium was of just the right shape and orientation
to allow the tracing of the analemma, an elongated figure
eight representing the relative motions of the Earth and
sun, on its floor. He took his idea to optical designer
Mark Gerchman, who designed a lens that will be mounted
high in the atrium's southern wall. The lens will project
a moving image of the solar disc that will, each day at
noon, cross a 100-foot-long analemma marked out on the floor.
Dennis has a further plan to mark the local meridian with
a 100-foot solar spectrum of sufficient clarity to show
the Fraunhofer lines, which indicate the chemical composition
of the sun's atmosphere. Dennis notes that analemmas were
used in medieval times to mark the holidays and the seasons.
"The Kendade analemma adds to this theme of time and calendar
the more modern scientific ideas of the sun as a complex
and dynamic physical object, and of the quantum mechanical
structure of matter," he says. "It should be aesthetically,
culturally, and scientifically compelling."